The French Line Part 3: Henri Chapron——Standing Time's Tests

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Henri Chapron founded his coachbuilding firm in Levallois-Perret, about 3.5 miles from the center of Paris, in the year after the Armistice.  Early one-off bodywork on Hispano-Suiza* and Delage* chassis led to frequent orders for coachwork on Delahaye* chassis after the mid-Thirties, as well as on the new line of D6 and D8-120 Delages that were based upon Delahaye engines after the merger of Louis Delage's firm with Delahaye.

This green cabriolet from 1937 is one of those Delahaye-based D8-120 Delages.  Its inline eight-cylinder engine, unlike the early 30s D8, a Delage design, was based upon adding two cylinders to the Delahaye 135 inline six. While pursuing this logical economy in tooling costs, Delahaye, to its credit, retained the Delage identity by offering the eight only in that marque, and agreed to Louis Delage's insistence on hydraulic brakes (he was still on the company board) while retaining mechanical brakes on Delahayes. The engine design goal was smoothness rather than horsepower. For horsepower, Delahaye designed a new V12 around this time for use in its 145 racers and 165 luxury cars, and in one spectacular Delage prototype. For ordinary mortals, there was a Delage D6-70 with a 3 liter inline 6 based upon Delahaye's six. Chapron's bodies for these cars were more conservative than offerings from Figoni & Falaschi, but there was plenty of sweep to the lines, as well as elegant details like the external exhaust plumbing on this cabriolet...

Chapron was a proponent of two-tone color schemes, and by 1948, the year of the Delahaye Type 135 shown below, many of them passed up the subtlety of the early Thirties cars for more striking contrasts...

The car above seems a twin of the 1947 example below.  The only differences I could spot are the color schemes and the clear lucite steering wheel (not shown) and lack of door vent windows on the green 1947 car...

Early after World War II, Chapron applied this general design scheme to two dream commissions. He rebodied two of the four Delahaye 145 GP racers from the prewar era with closed coupe bodies. The term "GT", let alone "supercar", was not yet a part of the enthusiast's lexicon in 1946, but both applied to this 4.5 liter, magnesium block V12 with its 3 camshafts and 24 spark plugs. Both 145 coupes survive.

Note the similar treatment of the teardrop fenders with incised surfaces on the gray coupe and the cabriolets above it.  Note also the way the front fenders peak above the hood line, and the similar placement of a chrome trim spear underlining the window sills and pointing towards the car's prow. The twelve-cylinder cars featured Cotal electromagnetic pre-selector gearboxes, much like the six-cylinder ones. These had four forward speeds, and four in reverse...

So did this two-tone blue Delahaye 235 from 1952 and '53.  Delahaye had upgraded the 3.5 liter 135 with hydraulic brakes and more power, and settled on this single model line to replace the heavier 4.5 liter 175 inline six, the short-lived elite model introduced after the war. Henri Chapron built most of the bodies for the 235, but there were only 84 of this model built... 

Most 235s shared this wide, split-oval grille design by designer Philippe Charbonneaux. Two or three cars were bodied in this coupe design by Chapron, with flowing front fenders again peaking above the louvered hood.  The fender lines were echoed in a Saoutchik design for a 235 cabriolet shown in our earlier post on the Delahaye history.  There was a lone Chapron notchback coupe with squared-off fender lines which could have served as a model for the Mercedes 220S coupe which came along a couple years later; it's shown below the blue coupe.

Delahaye built its last cars in 1954, continuing to build Jeep-like military vehicles. Delage disappeared along with Delahaye. Talbot Lago* and Salmson*, the latter the last regular source of work for Chapron among the luxury French marques, stopped offering their GT cars in 1959 and 1957, respectively.  In 1958 Henri Chapron, having seen the writing on the wall for the French luxury makers, wisely chose to focus his efforts on the Citroen DS-19 and its simplified variant, the ID-19. He began by building a convertible version of the DS, using the front doors from the sedan and concealing the rear fender seams with a vertical chrome strip.  Citroen refused to sell him new chassis, so he bought cars and modified them.  Orders were plentiful enough that in 1959 Citroen commissioned the "cabriolet usine"(factory convertible) which was offered by Citroen dealers but still built by Chapron. This, like the car below, had longer, cabriolet-specific front doors and special rear fenders without the seam. Eventually, Chapron would nearly 1,400 cabriolets and coupes on DS and ID chassis, including a couple of special Presidential sedans.

Chapron's choice of the DS was an inspired one. Citroen offered no sports or luxury models of its own, yet the advanced hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension offered a ride quality far beyond anything available in any luxury brands of that era, and rarely equalled even now. Today these cars are prized by collectors, and often stop onlookers in their tracks, as this red example did when parked in Carmel back during the Monterey Car Weekend in 2018.

Chapron squared off the rear fenders on his special bodies in 1965, as shown on the glassy coupe below from the following year.

The only element lacking in the DS-based cars that kept them from the top rank of luxury cars was an engine with the smoothness and power to match, say, Mercedes or Lancia offerings.  With the launch of the Maserati V6 powered Citroen SM in autumn 1970, a new opportunity presented itself to Henri Chapron.  His firm soon crafted convertibles, four door sedans, and even a couple of Presidential four door convertibles based upon Robert Opron's design for the SM. 

Two-door convertibles were called Mylord, and may have looked better with the top up (above) than with it down (below).  Either way, there was no doubt that this was something special.

The sedans were perhaps even more convincing.  If economic conditions had permitted, perhaps Citroen would have adopted these designs as factory-offered customs, as it did the Chapron DS. The fuel crisis brought on by the Arab oil embargo of 1973, however, reduced the appeal of the SM and cars like it. Shortly after it went out of production, Henri Chapron died, in 1978.  His wife ran the firm for a few more years, and offered special limousine  and landaulette versions of the new Peugeot 604, but closed the doors in 1985.  It closed the chapter of perhaps the longest-running line in the annals of French coachbuilders. 

*Footnote: The marque Delage is featured in our post, "Delage: A Car for the Ages" from May 20, 2018. Hispano-Suizas were featured on Sept. 25, 2017 in "Hispano-Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style", "Rolling Sculpture" from Dec. 31, 2016 and "A Brief History of Singular Cars" from Sept. 7, 2015.  Delahaye automobiles are featured in our Archives in the following posts:  "Golden Days of Delahayes" posted on June 30, 2018, "Chasing the Streamline" from May 30, 2017,  "Rolling Sculpture" and also in "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye" from Nov. 22, 2015. The last Talbot Lagos, the 2500 and Lago America, are profiled in "Talbot Lago 2500: The Other America" in these posts for July 3, 2016.  The history of the Salmson 2300s is recounted in "Forgotten Classic: Salmson 2300s", from June 18, 2016.

Photo credits

145 both shots & 235 second & third shots:  flickr.com
1966 Citroen DS Coupe:  Lt. Jonathan Asbury, USN
Citroen SM, gold Mylord cabriolet + black Opera sedan.: flickr.com
Citroen SM, white Mylord cabriolet: www.passion-citroen.com
SM Opera, bottom shot of silver car:  maserati-alfieri.co.uk
All others:  the author